Some Thoughts About Your “penny”

Many coin collectors got their start by collecting Lincoln cents and putting them in those familiar blue Whitman folders. Most everyone calls them “pennies”—a holdover from Colonial times in America, when English copper pennies were the smallest-value coins of the British pound system. 

- Ray Levato

Many coin collectors got their start by collecting Lincoln cents and putting them in those familiar blue Whitman folders. Most everyone calls them “pennies”—a holdover from Colonial times in America, when English copper pennies were the smallest-value coins of the British pound system. 

According to the U.S. government’s inflation calculator, a penny in 1955—when I started collecting Lincoln cents—had the same buying power as $0.09 does today. Think what would happen if the U.S. government stopping making the penny, as some have been suggesting. Popular expressions of wisdom could eventually fall by the wayside.

“A penny saved is a penny earned” (thanks to Benjamin Franklin). “Pennies from Heaven.” “A penny for your thoughts.” “A pretty penny.” “Penny-wise and pound-foolish” (a British expression). “Penny pincher.” “Penny-ante.” And to be “penniless” means that you don’t even have “one red cent.” If comedian Rodney Dangerfield were still alive today, he would say the poor penny “gets no respect.” 

Go into almost any convenience store and you’ll see a container near the cash register with a sign that says, “Need a penny, take a penny. Have a penny, leave a penny.”

If you saw a penny on the sidewalk, would you bend over and pick it up?